On Purpose with Jay Shetty - Is Your Ex Keeping You From Finding Real Love? 5 Hidden Signs You Are Missing

Episode Date: April 18, 2025

Do you ever feel stuck in the same dating patterns? Do you think your past relationship is still affecting you? Today, Jay unpacks the powerful and often hidden influence our past relationships have on our current dating pattern. Drawing from psychological research and personal reflection, Jay explores the concept of repetition compulsion—the unconscious tendency to recreate emotional patterns from our past, especially in romantic relationships. He reveals how our early attachments, particularly those with our parents and first loves, shape the way we love, what we fear, and even who we are drawn to.  With compassion and clarity, Jay outlines the five key signs that your ex—or more accurately, your past relationship wounds—might still be holding the steering wheel in your current dating life. He then re-introduces the attachment theory, helping them identify their own attachment styles—whether anxious, avoidant, or secure—and how these styles play out in their romantic behaviors. His message is clear: you are not broken, you are patterned—and patterns can be changed.  In this episode, you'll learn: How to Recognize When Your Past Is Sabotaging Your Love Life How to Break the Cycle of Repeating Unhealthy Relationship Patterns How to Tell the Difference Between Familiarity and Safety How to Avoid Self-Sabotaging Healthy Relationships How to Reparent Yourself and Meet Your Own Emotional Needs This episode is both a compassionate wake-up call and a hopeful guide for anyone seeking to build healthier, more fulfilling love. Whether you're recovering from a breakup or simply ready to stop repeating the past, this is the episode that could shift everything. With Love and Gratitude, Jay Shetty Join over 750,000 people to receive my most transformative wisdom directly in your inbox every single week with my free newsletter. Subscribe here. Join Jay for his first ever, On Purpose Live Tour! Tickets are on sale now. Hope to see you there! What We Discuss: 00:00 Intro 01:16  How Past Relationships Shape Your Dating Future 02:39 We Recreate Familiar Emotional Patterns In New Relationships 09:18 Five Signs Your Past Relationship Is Affecting You  12:09 What Are The Different Types Of Attachment Styles? 22:35 The Path To Earned SecuritySee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Welcome to My Legacy. I'm Martin Luther King III and together with my wife, Andrea Waters King and our dear friends, Mark and Craig Kilburger, we explore the personal journeys that shape extraordinary lives. Join us for heartfelt conversations with remarkable guests like David Oyelowo, Mel Robbins, Martin Sheen, Dr. Sanjay Gupta, and Billy Porter. Listen to My Legacy on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. This is My Legacy. Hey everyone, it's Jay Shetty,

and I'm thrilled to announce my podcast tour. For the first time ever, you can experience on purpose, in person. Join me in a city near you for meaningful, insightful conversations with surprise guests. It could be a celebrity, top wellness expert, or a CEO or business leader. We'll dive into experiences designed to experience growth, spark learning, and build real connections. I can't wait to meet you. There are a limited number of VIP experiences for a private Q&A, intimate meditation and a meet and greet with photos.

Tickets are on sale now. Head to jsheddy.me forward slash tour and get yours today. You're not being held back from finding real love because of who you're going out with. You're being held back by people you already went out with. And how crazy is it to think that your ex is still in control of your life? Your ex is still impacting your life. I know none of us want to be in that situation. The number one health and wellness podcast.

Jay Shetty. Jay Shetty. The one, the only Jay Shetty. Hey, everyone. Welcome back to On Purpose. My name is Jay Shetty. Hey everyone, welcome back to On Purpose. My name is Jay Shetty and I'm so grateful to welcome you back. This is the place you come to listen, learn and grow. Thank you for your commitment. Thank you for your time. Thank you for your energy. I appreciate it so, so deeply.

Now, today's episode is all about how past relationships shape your dating future. How many of you have ever found yourself saying, why do I keep attracting the same kind of people? Why do I keep attracting the same kind of person? Or why am I so guarded when things start to go well? or why am I always the one who's chasing someone. If you've ever asked any of those questions, this episode is for you. We're diving deep into the psychology of how your past relationships, loves and losses are still influencing who you choose, how you love and what you fear.

And most importantly, we're talking about how to break the cycle. I think so many of us feel like we're always repeating patterns, we keep making the same mistakes, we keep bumping into the same types of people and we don't realise what's going on. And sometimes we may pause and think, well, maybe something's wrong with me. But that doesn't solve the problem either, right? We keep repeating patterns, we keep finding the same people,

we keep being attracted to the same types of people, we keep having our heart broken in the exact same way. What is going on? Let's get into it. The first thing I want to do is talk to you about the truth about your relationship history. Here's a really interesting thing to think about. According to the Journal of Social and Personal Relationships, people tend to recreate familiar emotional patterns in new relationships.

Even if those patterns were painful. Why? Because familiar equals safe, even if it's unhealthy. Think about that moment. Familiar equals safe, even if it's unhealthy. If the mind feels something feels familiar, something feels like home, mind feels something feels familiar, something feels like home, something feels consistent, we see it as safe even though it's not healthy. And the fascinating thing about this is sometimes it's repeating the patterns of our parents. If your home was always a place of anxiety,

you now feel at home in places of anxiety. If at home you had to constantly try to get your parents attention, you now feel it's familiar in dating when you're trying to get someone's attention. If you were always over loved at home, you now feel familiar when you're over loved, even if that person's love bombing you. It's really fascinating how our first loves, our parents are the first people to truly love us, the first person we ever dated, the first person we had a crush on,

all of this becomes our relationship history. And whatever that relationship history looks like, becomes what we yearn for. I described this in my book, Eight Rules of Love as the gifts and gaps. We try to repeat the gifts that our parents gave us and we try to fill the gaps that our parents left by the people we choose. Everything is wired from the past and therefore if you really want to move forward, if you really want to make progress we have to start by looking back. Now this idea is

called repetition compulsion a term coined by Freud. It means we unconsciously repeat relationship dynamics from our past hoping to fix them this time round. This is the part that I find so interesting. Not only do we pick things that feel familiar, we feel this time's the exception. This time we're gonna solve it. This time we're gonna figure it out. I'm gonna date someone who's emotionally unavailable but this time I'm gonna be able to change them. I'm gonna date someone who's emotionally unavailable, but this time I'm going to be able to change them. I'm going to date someone who's emotionally immature, but this time they're going to become more immature.

I'm going to date someone who disrespects me, but they're going to learn to respect me. This is how we unconsciously repeat relationship dynamics from our past, hoping to fix them this time round. So if your ex was emotionally unavailable and you now find yourself drawn to someone who gives mixed signals, that's not a coincidence. That's your brain saying, this feels like home. This feels like home. This feels like home. So I want to clarify something here.

It's not because we enjoy the pain. It's because our brain feels safe and is still trying to solve it. Maybe if I live it again, this time I can get it right. And here are some more real life examples. You had an emotionally unavailable parent and now you keep falling for partners who are hot and cold distant or avoidant. You were constantly criticized growing up and now you seek validation from people who hold back their approval.

Your first love cheated or betrayed you and now you feel hypervigilant or drawn to people who trigger that insecurity. It's not just bad luck. It's your nervous system saying this feels familiar, I know how to survive this. This literally is blowing my mind as I'm saying it.

Think about that for a second. We often say, oh, it's just bad luck. I just have bad luck in dating. It just keeps going wrong for me. And what ends up happening is not only are we stuck in a cycle, we now start saying harsh critical things to ourselves. But the reality is it's not just bad luck. It's your nervous system saying, this feels familiar, I know how to survive this. We keep moving in the direction of things we think we can survive, rather than the discomfort of something we're not used to, even if it's better for us. It's almost like saying when you're trying to change what you're eating or you're trying to go to the gym. We all know going to the gym is better for us,

but it's uncomfortable to choose it. We'd rather stay in bed because it feels safe, even though it's not healthy. Your brain does this because it's wired to seek what's familiar. Unresolved trauma doesn't just sit quietly in your memory. It repeats itself in your choices, relationships and emotional reactions. Repetition compulsion is your subconscious trying to rewrite the story. To finally win the love, approval or safety you didn't get the first time.

But here's the twist. You can't heal by reliving the wound. You heal by choosing differently. The moment you recognize your patterns, you interrupt the cycle. It might look like, wow, I'm actually not in love. I'm just trying to earn the love I never got. You might hear it as this isn't chemistry. This is a wound dressed up as attraction.

This person reminds me of someone who hurt me, not someone who can love me. That awareness is where the healing begins, right? That's where it really begins. I hope this is hitting you as hard as it's hitting for me right now. And get this, a University of Denver study found that emotional baggage from previous relationships is one of the top predictors of dissatisfaction in new ones. So yeah, your past is in the room even when your ex isn't. So what do we do about this?

So the five signs your past relationship might still be in the driving seat. Number one, you're hyper independent or emotionally walled off. Now independence is great. It's when we're emotionally walled off that our independence is no longer independence. It's actually isolation. Right? It's not that you feel comfortable on your own. It's that you only feel good on your own. Right?

There's a difference between liking your company and enjoying your company and only wanting to be alone because you're scared of connection. The second sign that your past relationship might still be holding the wheel is you panic when someone gets too close or too distant. Have you noticed how when someone gets close we start to go, oh yeah I'm not sure this is working out, I'm not really sure about this, or maybe they weren't right, you now start to see all the red flags. All of a sudden, you're convinced that this person's not great for you.

We also get panicky when someone gets too distant. If someone says, hey, I'm going away for the week, all of a sudden, we're wondering why they haven't messaged us immediately. Right. If someone says, hey, I'm going away for three days. We're like, oh, do you have to go?? Right and that's just triggering something from the past. You may not even like this person that much. You may not even have that depth of connection with them and they may be thinking wait a minute why are you gonna miss me so much we've only been dating for a month and all of a sudden you

start to recognize and I'm sure you can see how it all comes from previous abandonment, previous isolation, previous disconnection. Number three, we've talked about this, you're drawn to the same kind of emotionally unavailable partners. Number four, you sabotage healthy connections because they feel too easy. This is what self-sabotage really is. Self-sabotage is you ending something before someone else ends it. You'd rather be the one to claim the failure than live with someone else rejecting you. You'd rather be the one to say, hey this is too simple. It's too easy. There must be something wrong with it This is too good to be true and number five you confuse Intensity with intimacy so many of us things if things are intense up and down

Drama, you know all of the chaos that that's intimacy that that means that we're in love that that means that we have connection But the truth is just that's just the connection you saw being mirrored for such a long time. This is why it's so important for us to understand the attachment styles. First of all, I want to introduce you to the idea or reintroduce you to the idea of attachment styles. Something you may or may not have come across. An attachment style is basically your relationship blueprint. It's how you connect, how you handle closeness, and how you react to emotional stress in love. I always say to people, you will know the strength of a relationship,

not by how you deal with the good times, but how you deal with the stressful times. How your partner or potential partner deals with a fight, disagreement or argument is more telling than how they deal with a date or an anniversary. How they deal with things going wrong is more important than how they deal with everything going right. It's one of the reasons why we all go through the honeymoon phase. going wrong is more important than how they deal with everything going right. It's one of the reasons why we all go through the honeymoon phase. And so how you react to emotional stress in love is so important. And it's usually shaped by childhood based on how safe or secure your early relationships were.

So there are three main types of attachment style. But this is so important because it basically shows how you latch on to people, how you connect with people, how you feel when they're not giving you attention, not giving you presence, when you're not feeling any affection. And you can clearly spot how you make those mistakes and how you don't want to make them again. That's my goal with this episode. My genuine goal with this episode is I don't want you to keep making the same mistakes. I don't want you to keep dating the same person

just with a different name and a different face and a different hairstyle. I want you to outgrow your trauma. I want you to outgrow your trauma. I want you to outgrow your weaker attachment styles. I want you to outgrow the effects of your previous relationships that are holding you back from finding real love. You're not being held back from finding real love because of who you're going out with, you're being held back by people you already went out with. And how crazy is it to think that your ex is still in control of your life?

Your ex is still impacting your life. I know none of us want to be in that situation. I couldn't be more excited to share something truly special with all you tea lovers out there. And even if you don't love tea, if you love refreshing, rejuvenating, refueling sodas that are good for you, listen to this. Radhe and I poured our hearts into creating Juni Sparkling Tea with adaptogens for you because we believe in nurturing your body and with every sip, you'll experience calmness of mind,

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easily and bounce back from conflict. Love feels safe, not scary. You might be secure if you don't play games, don't fear being abandoned and you're okay being alone or in love. Now this of course is rare, challenging but we all want to be there. Second is anxious attachment, something a lot of us experience. You crave closeness but often fear it's going to be taken away. So you want to be close, You actually want to be connected. But there's always this insecurity,

this hidden fear, this feeling that's niggling away at you, making you feel like it's going to be taken away. At any moment, it could all be taken away. You might overthink texts, read between the lines, or need lots of reassurance.

How many times have you met someone who keeps checking with you to say, hey, does everything feel good? Hey, does this make sense? Hey, is this okay? Hey, are we on the right path? And you might be wondering what is going on here? I just told them I love them. I just told them that I was okay.

Or maybe you've seen in yourself. Maybe you were that person who keeps wanting to be reassured that you're doing the right thing. You're doing a good job. That they're happy. And you keep checking, are you happy? Is everything okay? And they're like, wait a minute, I just literally took a breath. Like what changed, right? And this is something we can all relate to. We overthink texts. We make things mean what they don't mean, right?

Don't give meaning to something that doesn't have a meaning. Don't make up a story about something that is just information. We're really good at taking information and turning it into a story. Don't take a fact and turn it into a story. Don't take a fact and turn it into a feeling. The fact is they haven't messaged back for 30 minutes. Now, your feeling is saying they didn't message me back because they didn't like my message. I must have said something wrong. I must have come on too strong.

I might be pushing them away. Oh my gosh, I did this before. You're now attaching a feeling to a fact. The fact is just they haven't messaged back for 30 minutes. There's no reason. There's no information. There's no data. There's no insight.

But you're now creating a story around that event. Don't make every event into a story. Don't make every text into a story. Don't make every fact become a feeling without knowing what it is. You might have an anxious attachment if you feel like you're always too much or always waiting for the other shoe to drop. Those are two good signs that you know you have an anxious attachment style. And by the way, none of these make you weak. None of these make you wrong. None of these make you bad.

We all have one of these, but we can all try to work towards having more secure attachment. That's the goal. That's what we want to do. We want to work towards having more secure attachment and move away from anxious attachment. Now, the third one is the avoidant attachment. You value independence a lot, sometimes too much. You might push people away, get overwhelmed by emotional needs, or shut down when things get real. Now you might be avoidant if you've said things like,

I'm just not good at relationships, or I don't want to rely on anyone. I actually got like this when I left the monastery, there was a big part of me that felt I don't need a relationship to be happy. I'm happy by myself and I'd say things like that. And I realized it was really just me having developed an avoidant attachment. And that wasn't healthy either because you can lose out on something

that's beautiful for you. You can push someone away who wants to be close. And what's really interesting here is what ends up happening is that anxious attachment people end up is that anxious attachment people end up meeting avoidant attachment people. Now if you've got an anxious attachment with an avoidant attachment that can be a recipe for disaster because the anxious person's constantly checking in saying hey is everything okay? Are you happy? Are we going in the right direction? And the avoidant person's like you're getting too close, you're too much, you're being too clingy, right?

You can notice and you can probably relate to how that's happened in your life, which is why there's an even greater need for us all to move into secure. Now if a secure person is with someone with an anxious attachment, they can remind them, they can be reassuring, they can help them feel safe if the anxious person is aware and wants to upgrade and move forward. If a secure attachment is with an avoidant, they can potentially get that person to be more open, to be more communicative, if the avoidant person is aware of their attachment style. We have to pay attention to our patterns, not just our past partner's patterns.

Your attachment style isn't about them, it's about your emotional reflexes. Welcome to My Legacy. I'm Martin Luther King III, and together with my wife, Andrea Waters King, and our dear friends, Mark and Craig Kilburger, we explore the personal journeys that shape extraordinary lives.

Each week, we'll sit down with inspiring figures like David Oyelowo, Mel Robbins, Martin Sheen, Dr. Sanjay Gupta, and Billy Porter. And they're plus one, they'll ride or die, as they share stories never heard before about their remarkable journey. Listen to My Legacy on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

This is My Legacy. Yes, you can change your attachment style. It's called earned security. And it happens when you rewire old patterns through small, consistent shifts in how you relate to yourself and others. The best thing you can do is move towards secure attachment because you can't control whether someone is anxious or avoidant but you can be secure and when you're secure you'll be able

to see you'll actually be able to be better able to tell whether someone else is secure because you know what that looks like you know what it secure because you know what that looks like. You know what it sounds like. You know what it feels like. So when you meet someone who's loving all up on you and wanting your attention in the beginning, you realize this person might have an anxious attachment. You now know what that means.

At the same time, if you meet someone who isn't available for you, you know that that's avoidant because you're secure and you realize, okay, I not going to chase this person. I want someone who tells me where we stand. I want someone who is who they say they are. Right? So let's talk about the path to earned security. Number one, notice the pattern name the feeling. Why does it matter? You can't change what you don't see. So what do you do?

Start observing your reflexes in love without judgment. I don't want you to get critical or harsh with yourself. I just want you to be aware of where you stand. For example, when someone doesn't text back, do I change fact into feeling? When things get emotionally close, what do you usually do? Naming your pattern puts space between you and the automatic reaction. That's where change begins. You start becoming, you don't say

I'm avoidant, you say I have an avoidant pattern. You don't say I am anxious. You say I have an anxious pattern. Step number two is regulate before you react. Anxious and avoidant behaviors are often nervous system responses, not conscious choices. The next time you're triggered, I want you to remind yourself I want you to remind yourself this is because I have been triggered by a past emotion This is not about the current moment. It's about the past Let me be really conscious about that before I react

Number three is start feeling safe with safe people. You don't heal in isolation You heal in better relationships this applies applies to your friends, your parents, your colleagues, your family members. Trying to heal through having healthier relationships. Your romantic life will heal when your relationships heal. So what do you do? Seek out emotionally available consistent people. It might feel boring at first because it's safe. But text or hang out with someone who always shows up. Spend less energy chasing and more energy receiving. Let calm connection become your new normal. This is step four.

Practice secure behaviors even if you don't feel them yet. Right, you might be thinking, Jay, I don't feel secure, why am I practicing it? Well, because if you practice it, you'll actually get used to it. We're trying to get you to rewire your brain. Behavior rewires belief. Say that again. Behavior rewires belief. Start acting like a securely attached person would. For example, communicate directly.

Hey, I felt a little off after our convo. Can we talk? Set boundaries without apology. Give people a chance to show you they're safe before deciding they're not. You don't have to feel 100% secure to act 1% more secure. Right?

Let me say that again. You don't have to feel 100% secure to act 1% more secure. And the fifth and final step is reparent yourself. A lot of insecure attachment comes from unmet needs in childhood. Meet those needs for yourself. When you feel unloved or anxious, say, it's okay, I've got me. If you wanted validation from someone else,

give it to yourself. If you wanted care from someone else, give it to yourself. If you wanted gifts from someone else, give it to yourself. If you wanted a big birthday from someone else, give it to yourself. If you wanted gifts from someone else, give it to yourself. If you wanted a big birthday from someone else, give it to yourself. That becomes your anchor. That's how you build internal safety.

I want you to remember this. You're not broken. You're just patterned and patterns can change. One pause, one choice, one safe connection at a time. Thank you so much for listening to today. I hope you'll share this episode with someone else who's struggling. Maybe someone who's single right now, someone who recently broken up. This episode could save you months of your life, maybe even years. Thanks

for listening. Remember, I'm forever in your corner and always rooting for you. doing in your relationship. We also talk about how to deal with relationships when they're under stress. If you're going through something right now with your partner or someone you're seeing, this is the episode for you. No wonder our kids are struggling. We have a new technology and we've just taken it in hook, line and sinker and we have to be mindful for our kids. They'll just be thumbing through this stuff, you know, their minds never sleeping.